Proteases have been marketed for more than 20 years for a lot of different purposes, the most important as being ingredients in detergents.
Proteases have been developed by isolation of proteases found in nature. Most commercially available proteases are obtained from the genus Bacillus. Currently new types of proteases enter the market, offering the possibility of giving a better cost/performance ratio at various specified conditions.
Examples of commercial Bacillus protease products are Alcalase.RTM., Esperase.RTM., Primase.RTM., Savinase.RTM. and Durazyme.RTM. (a protein-engineered variant of Savinase), all available from Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark. These and similar enzyme products from other commercial sources are active in detergent solutions, i.e. at pH values in the range from 8 to 11 and in the presence of sequestering agents, surfactants and bleaching agents such as sodium borate, but their activity decreases if the process water used contains hypochlorite. This is an increasing problem as more and more water in the industrialized world gets chlorinated.